Saturday, 19 July 2014

Why Chivalry is an Enemy of Feminist Progress

For some time I
have struggled to understand why the word ‘gentleman’ (and the concept,
moreover) tends to repel me a little bit. It seems to me that the perfect man
longed for by young women and living apparently mainly in Nicholas Sparks
novels is charged not only with the responsibility of being a decent person in
general, but should also volunteer himself for any remotely physically
challenging task, regularly spend money to treat the women in his life, and
should make obvious efforts to protect his female partners from the rest of the
men in the world. I always felt like it was too bitchy to admit that I don’t
really want any of that.

As a feminist
and a fairly independent person, I don’t want any person in my life to take
responsibility for my finances, or any other part of life as an adult woman.
Fortunately my partner shares my critical stance on gender norms, and has never
had to be told not to pay for my dates/pull out my chair/protect me from the
world. I understand how these behaviors must seem like the kindest option to many
men, but the truth is if I had a man insisting upon paying for every date or
carrying heavy objects for me, I’d feel patronized and robbed of autonomy
instead of enamored. I want the world to see me as a person who can do things
for herself, and I definitely wouldn’t want my partner of all people to treat
me as if I can’t, even if that wasn’t the intention behind his actions.

But my reaction
to these norms of the gentleman stereotype runs deeper than these purely
personal objections. I think in modern life we have managed to separate these
ideals from their very problematic origins, and in doing so we’ve cast a sheath
of innocence over something that’s actually quite offensive if we interrogate
it at all. The notion of chivalric romance belongs to the medieval institutions
of knighthood and courtly love, wherein a man’s honor depended upon his
adherence to a code of nobility. The courtly love trope depicts medieval men
securing women’s affections through a cycle that looks something like this:

1. Initial
attraction based solely on woman’s appearance

2. Worship from
afar

3. Declarations
of passionate devotion

4. Virtuous
rejection by the woman

5. More
insistent declarations of passionate undying devotion

6. Moans of
approaching death from unsatisfied desire (this is the first time I’ve ever
used words directly from a Wikipedia article, but that’s just too good)

Of course there
is little evidence to demonstrate conclusively that these codes existed in real
life as well as literature, but even just as a model to aim towards, they
hardly promote wholesome romantic relations[2].
Women in medieval literature exist mainly as idols or objects (or both). And
although many of the men who engage in what we can call modern chivalric
behavior may not be well-versed in Arthurian literature (no judgment here, that
was by far my least favorite university paper), I would argue that the connection
still very much exists. While many people today would understand why the
relentless wooing and idolization of women considered noble in medieval society
are actually very problematic, still more would consider them harmless at worst
and charming and desirable at best. Thus, many of the things modern men do to
try and win a woman’s heart (paying for her meals, opening doors, lifting heavy
objects, etc.) are not so far divorced from the norms of the 13th
century. These actions can be placed on the opposite end of a scale also
featuring stalking, controlling and abusive relationships, and all of the
uglier forms of sexism, because they are all based in the same rarely examined
idea: that women are innately more precious, more delicate, and less human than
men.

This is a
problem not only because of the connection between what might be seen as
harmless chivalry and extremely damaging sexism, but because chivalry is
constantly used as an argument against feminism. People already confused over
the term ‘feminist’ have claimed to me that it is paradoxical because modern
women want both independence and to
have dates paid and doors opened by their male romantic partners. This, of
course, is a massive and unhelpful generalization, but as long as women
continue to accept and encourage displays of chivalric behavior, it will
continue to be used against us.

Of course, these
dark beliefs need not be present in order for men to treat women kindly and
respectfully, and I don’t want to suggest that a better world would be one in
which no one opened doors for anyone. I just don’t see why courtesy has to be
gendered. If you believe sincerely that women are just as capable as men, you
can perform chivalrous acts towards anybody who might be in need of a hand or
just because you feel like it. We could be a society not of gentlemen and
fragile ladies, but of gentle people, who don’t need an age-old sexist behavior
code to tell us where and when to bother being nice. And if that were the case,
I would also probably be less inclined to worry that the men who want to buy me
things and perform acts of servitude are secretly expecting some sexual reward
in return.

As a feminist, I
want to participate in building a society in which my sex is not seen as a
disability, and to me that means pulling my own weight (literally). I want to
be the woman who volunteers to carry the heavy boxes of paper up the stairs at
work. Unfortunately, this has been difficult for me to pull off, because:

a. I am not very
physically strong, and

b. I have
arthritis – an actual disability – in my hands, shoulders and neck. And
long-term muscular strain issues relating to the chronic pain.

However,
participating in any way in the perpetuation of the ‘women are fragile and must
be looked after/served by men’ ideal bothers me a lot, so I’m making it one of
my fitness goals for the rest of the year to build up my upper body strength in
whatever way I can manage. I may never be able to move furniture on my own, but
I’ll be damned if I can’t at least lend a hand when I want to. I hope this
leads people to see me as someone who doesn’t depend upon anyone else, much
less on a gendered system of special treatment. Because I don’t want to be
treated differently, or seen differently, even if it’s in exclusively positive
ways.

2 comments:

The social psychology courses during my undergrad showed us some research that found that cultures which strongly supported "male chivalry" and the belief that women were meant to be protected also had a wider gender gap. Most were correlational studies but a few found pretty good evidence that the relationship between such attitudes and the higher discrimination against women were causal. I wish I could remember the details but it's been a while :( The only thing I remember was that the attitude was only specific to the "madonna" persona. Not only that, but the higher the attitudes of chivalry/protection towards the "madonna", the higher the backlash towards the "whore". It pretty much provided an incentive for women to stick to a very traditional role while at the same time it punished those that stepped outside of it. They're pretty interesting studies, I encourage you to look it up. If only I could remember the references >< If you're really keen I can have a look through my old notes and email you article refs :)